Book Publishing and Printing Technologies in Premodern China (Seventh-Nineteenth Centuries)

Abstract

In the world history of printing, China is distinctive for the number and variety of different technologies employed in the premodern era—that is, between the seventh century, when xylography or woodblock (muban木版, diaoban雕版, diaoke雕刻) printing was invented, and the late nineteenth century, when mechanized movable type and other imports from the West began to supplant indigenous print technologies. The Chinese also developed several methods of movable-type printing as early as the Song dynasty (960–1279): earthenware or clay movable type (nihuozi泥活字) and wooden movable type (muhuozi木活字) printing. Metal movable type (jinshu huozi金屬活字), first invented in Korea in the thirteenth century, was also in limited use in China by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644); Chinese printers experimented with bronze or copper (tong銅), tin (xi錫), lead (qian鉛), and, eventually, porcelain (ciban磁版) types. In the Qing (1644–1911), wooden movable type or wax tablets (laban蠟板) were used for rapid reproduction of news sheets and public announcements. Each method had different practical, economic, technological, and/or aesthetic advantages. For example, xylography reproduced calligraphy more effectively and allowed publishers to reprint works easily and relatively cheaply as the market demanded, whereas movable type was the most efficient way of speedily publishing texts of immediate relevance but short shelf life, or texts in which the same characters were frequently repeated (e.g., genealogies). The variety of print technologies thus offered Chinese publishers, whether official, private, commercial, or institutional, considerable flexibility in adapting technology to content and use. But, generally speaking, throughout the long twelve-century history of premodern Chinese printing, woodblock printing remained the dominant technology, as it was most suitable for printing the Chinese language and could most effectively reproduce the aesthetic quality of Chinese calligraphy. This bibliography gathers sources, primary (where available) and secondary, to provide information about these different printing technologies, their origins, their development, and their uses—and the ways in which they shaped Chinese book culture from the late Tang dynasty (618–907) through much of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911). Some attention is also devoted to the techniques of Chinese color printing, the materials and tools of printing, craft labor and publishing organization, and the economics of printing. A final section treats the fate of the premodern technologies in the modern era. For works that treat the history of Chinese publishing and book culture, see the Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies article “Printing and Book Culture.”